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A note to some of these reviewers: the 70mm presentation that played this summer was not a restoration at all, and is not representative of what will be on this new 4K Blu ray. The 70mm run was a "non-restoration", a new print from the negative with zero digital bells and whistles and cleaning. If you didn't like what you saw, it's not because of anything Christopher Nolan did, it's just that you watched a new print of a 50 year old negative of a film that you're accustomed to seeing with slight variations in color from other masters that have been struck over the years, whether on VHS, DVD, or even the Blu Ray from 2007. This new 4k Blu Ray WILL be what is shown on digital 4k IMAX screens around the country starting on August 24. It's a new digital remaster. If you were lucky enough to have seen a 70mm screening, you'll have seen that the negative has been VERY well cared for, and isn't in need of "restoration", only some cleanup and, well, remastering for 4k hdtv.

2001: A Space Odyssey is an all-time classic science fiction movie that can never be equaled. Even though it's been more than a decade since the time-frame of the movie, the concept of a technologically advanced future is wonderful and we can hope that one day we'll have things like Hiltons on an orbiting space station, routine civilian spaceflights, permanent bases on the moon and manned expeditions to the outer planets. It has to be noted that Stanley Kubrick was making the film as fast as Arthur C. Clarke was writing the novel, but there are gaps in the film that most people don't get.

***SPOILER ALERT***

Most people don't get "the part with the apes." Millions of years ago during the "Dawn of Man" the apelike creatures that competed with other animals for food and water were in danger of being wiped out, despite their potential to evolve into intelligent beings. Enter the "monolith," the rectangular object of dimensions 1x4x9. The apes are curious about the object and are attracted to it when it emits a piercing signal. From that moment the apes are different. While examining some animal bones, one of them has an epiphany: a large bone can be used to kill other animals that can be eaten, and can be used to defend the tribe against other apes. Many anthropologists agree that when primitive apes became carnivorous, the sudden influx of protein in the diet lead to enlargement and evolution of the brain, hastening intelligence.

From this information, we now realize the monolith is an alien tool that can be used to assist in the evolution of intelligent species. First, it is used to help apes evolve into humans. Millions of years later another monolith (the one dug up on the moon) sends a signal that those beings have advanced to the point of traveling away from their planet and leads to the Discovery mission to Jupiter. Sadly, all loose ends are not tied up in this film (Why is there a monolith in orbit around Jupiter? Why did the HAL9000 computer try to kill the crew? What really happened to David Bowman when he approached the monolith?) and we have to wait until the first sequel, 2010: Odyssey Two to get those answers.

Watching the Blu-ray of Kubrick's masterpiece and seeing the film for the umpteenth time, I was struck with the time and detail he put into demonstrating, for the first time anywhere, how weird space travel is to the descendants of the smart apes of the film's first act. It is not just that the human animal is so vulnerable in the vast void of space unless encased in an airtight suit, vehicle or whatever, and tethered to life support equipment at every moment, but it is also the absence of gravity, the strange spacial relationships when there is no true up or down, no north and south, east and west, and above all the silence of the abyss, where murder is the cold quiet of "life functions terminated" and explosions are never heard, nor anything else but the sound of one's own breathing. No one has ever explored this with the same understanding either before or since.

In space all normal orientations and familiarities are gone and the inhospitable indifference of the endless vacuum redefines the human experience. It poses the question that perhaps space exploration would be better left to HAL and his digital brethren. But that is before Kubrick hurtles us through time and space and possibly even dimensions to transform and evolve the human species into a new being so adapted and comfortable as to find the void its playground.

A remarkable, brilliant one-of-a-kind film and experience, now approaching its 50th anniversary, and yet no other film has so intensely explored the silent isolation, the precise balletic geometry of rendezvous, the lonely tedium and the claustrophobia of hermetic environs to imagine what space travel means to the human animal with the same detail and understanding. Genius.